Google blesses Cyanogen. Android hacks for all.

First Google tried to ban it, now Google is embracing it: Cyanogen, the band of merry hackers who breathe new life into old Android phones, has received Google’s blessing and will be releasing a phone of its own.

CyanogenMod is the version of Android you turn to when your handset maker has let you down, either by including too much bloatware on your phone, or by being too slow to pass onto you the latest version of Android.

It’s designed so it can be installed over your old version of Android, to give you a slimmed down, up-to-date version with added features such as themes that allow you to change the look and feel of your phone. CyanogenMod often has tweaks that make it go faster than vanilla Android, too.

In November, Cyanogen pulled its installer from Google’s Play store, after being warned by Google that the installer was encouraging phone owner to void their warranty. Presumably a phone that comes with CyanogenMod already installed will have no such warranty issues.

The Oppo N1 phone that will come with CyanogenMod pre-installed is huge. It’s got a 5.9-inch, full-HD screen, a 1.7 GHz quad-core processor, and a 13-megapixel camera that spins around so it can point at you, away from you, or anywhere in between. It normally sells for $650, and given that the CyanogenMod software update/hack is normally a free download, Cyanogen’s own version of the N1 should sell at or around that price, too.